Assateague “Ponies” (Equua caballus)
The mystery remains just that as to how these unique and gorgeous ponies arrived on the Assateague seashore. Folklore has it that they swam onto the shore after a Spanish shipwreck during the 16th century. Others believe they immigrated by Colonial Virginia farmers to graze on the island after the legislature enacted laws requiring fencing and levied taxes on all livestock due to crop damage caused by free-roaming farm animals. In either instance, they survived in and adapted to their environment in just the ways needed to flourish until today.
Assateague ponies (Equua caballus) are a unique breed that is almost as big as horses. Scientists do not actually consider them to be a true pony, actually taking their heritage from the equine family. Still though, natives to the Assateague Islands have always referred to these feral horses as "ponies" and this designation has stuck throughout the years. While the original version of the horses was usually solid in color, over the years of breeding, their patterning and colors have co-mingled and expanded.
Taxonomy Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Mammalia (Taxon entry)
Order: Perissodactyla
Family: Equidae
Genus: Equus
Species Equus caballus
Common name Horse
Synonyms Equus caballus caballus, Equus ferus caballus
(AnAge: The Animal Ageing and Logevity Database)
“Assateague Island National Seashore has a combined total of over 300 wild ponies in Maryland and Virginia” (AssateagueIsland.com). There is fence that provides a partition between Maryland and Virginia on the island and splits the group into two, about equal groups. They usually break...
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... consists of salt marsh grass. They will also drink salt water, but they will find fresh water throughout the island. Because of the salt consumption, they often look more bloated or fatter than a domestic horse. Their diet consists of seaweed, rosehips bayberry twigs and even poison ivy, as well.
There are no known natural predators of the Assateague pony. The only real threat they encounter is human. Though there are rules and regulations about human interactions with the ponies, Assateague Island has become a tourist attraction. Some tourists feed the ponies’ unhealthy food, which attracts the ponies to the road where they can be hit by cars. They are not afraid of people and are known to walk right up to people on the beach. Although beautiful, it is best to treat them as wild, feral animals to avoid injury as they are known to bite or kick without warning.
with one another. During the winter they would move near the water because of large schools of
Isle Royal is located fifty-six miles north of Michigan’s Keweenaw Peninsula. It is the largest wilderness area in Michigan (USNPS, 2014). The island is surrounded by Lake Superior, which creates a cooler temperature. This results in arctic plant species growth on the island. There are only eighteen mammal species present on the island because most mammals cannot make the trip across the frozen great lake (USNPS, 2014). The need for an ice bridge is not the only environmental factor that is stopping the migration of animals; there is also the severe cold, and also wind and fog (Vucetich, 2012). Some species such as caribou and coyote have found the island to be too intense and have gone extinct (Vucetich, 2012). Due to the harsh weather and isolation of the island, humans have never regularly lived on the island (Vucetich, 2012). Some of species that are present such as the red squirrel are becoming their own subspecies due to its separation from the mainland (USNPS, 2014). The isolation of Isle Royal is what makes it a great place to conduct research, it has very low human interaction and the species that are on the island will have been and continue to be isolated from the mainland.
Wharton, Mary E., and Edward L. Bowen. The Horse World of the Bluegrass. New York: The John Bradford Press, 1980.
When individuals face obstacles in life, there is often two ways to respond to those hardships: some people choose to escape from the reality and live in an illusive world. Others choose to fight against the adversities and find a solution to solve the problems. These two ways may lead the individuals to a whole new perception. Those people who decide to escape may find themselves trapped into a worse or even disastrous situation and eventually lose all of their perceptions and hops to the world, and those who choose to fight against the obstacles may find themselves a good solution to the tragic world and turn their hopelessness into hopes. Margaret Laurence in her short story Horses of the Night discusses the idea of how individual’s responses
The first horses were forced to hang in slings under the deck of ships all the way across the sea to the New World. The explorers brought only the toughest and best horses to the New World. They were bringing so many horses that soon the Spanish Government restricted how many horses could be brought to the New World. There were already enough horses in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Santa Domings to start breeding farms. Soon after the farms were established, they started on the main land, and that is where the mustangs got their start.
All The Pretty Horses opens at the funeral of John Grady Cole in 1949. As of 1949, John Grady is 16 and has spent his entire life on his grandfather’s ranch. After the death of his grandfather, John’s mother wants to sell the ranch. Even though his mother has told him of her intentions to sell it, John desperately wants run the ranch. A visit to their family lawyers affirms that there is nothing he can do, from this visit he also learns that his parents have become officially divorced. After his final visit with his father, which is ultimately his goodbye, John goes to see his mother in a play in San Antonio. After this he makes the final decision to leave San Angelo for Mexico with his friend Rawlins.
...t the guaranteed developmental boom following the completion of the project will also ensure an even greater and more damaging human impact as there will be more beachfront lighting, boats, and beach pollution. Unconcerned with the negative ramifications of the beach nourishment project, islanders on Topsail prove their allegiance to development, tourism, artificial beaches, the promise for a more booming economy and the selfish desire for hurricane protection even though they riskily built homes on one of the most hazardous and unprotected barrier islands in the United States. Topsail’s willingness to betray the environmental protection organizations it’s worked tirelessly to support makes me question whether the promotion of the Topsail Turtle Project and the Turtle Hospital was a noble cause to save endangered animals or a farce to attract the media and tourism.
Before 1860 it was virtually impossible to get a letter or other form of correspondence from St. Joseph Missouri to Sacramento California in less than 20 days. 20 days seemed entirely too long for the west coast merchants and bankers to wait for documents from the east. So three men, William Russell, Alexander Majors and William Waddell created the Pony Express. The Pony Express ensured fast and safe delivery of the mail.
The Island is used to battles and struggles for independence. Even going back as far as the 16th century when the Conquistadors had control of the island, the Indigenous people that lived on the Island called Taínos, united and revolted against the Spaniards. But only armed with spears, and bows they were no match for the flintlock weapons, cannons, and steel breastplate of the Conquistadors. In time the Spaniards all but wiped out the Taíno population and culture, and took control of the Island. Remnants of Taíno genes still exist due to the in...
Hoof beats pounding across the sand: this is the sound of ponies living freely on Assateague Island, which lies on the Maryland and Virginia border. Maryland leaves its Assateague ponies in peace and preserves them, but Virginia manages its Chincoteague ponies disparately. However free and wild the ponies may seem, they are property of the Chincoteague Volunteer Fire Department (VFD). The selling of these ponies began in 1925; the VFD fully acquired the herd in 1947 (Holden). One of the most tragic aspects of the auction is that the most trafficable ponies are less than a year old; buyers prefer to sunder the foals from their mothers at the clang of the auctioneer's gavel rather than waiting for the foals to reach the proper age for healthy separation. The older a pony is, the lower their price. These untamed ponies, sold into domestication and transported away from the only home they know, now live surrounded by humans and must become domesticated. The treatment and auctioning of the wild Chincoteague ponies is cruel and unnatural because the ponies are not accustomed to human contact and forced to perform actions against their will.
domestic horses (equus caballus). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 106(3), 947-951. doi:10.1073/pnas.0809127105
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he horse, Equus ferus caballus, is a subspecies from the family Equidae. Over the past 50 million years, through survival adaptations, the common horse has evolved from a relatively small, multi-toed animal into the large, single toed animal known today (Wilson,. Mammal Species of the World (3rd ed.). Baltimore).
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